“Route 191” by Dan Grossman

Unsplash image, Kevin@1presidio

Route 191

Moonset. Redrock country a black mystery
in the wee hours, dawn a deep blue over
the eastern cliffs. Over the horizon 
Larry King blows blather into smoke rings:
The static crackles on my AM receiver.  

This is Utah: Land of Sego lilies, 
the Mormon Tabernacle, Uranium-235. 
The state song whistles through my window.
Does the wind know these things exist
together here? I smell only sagebrush.
Venus hangs over the highway before me.

King takes the next caller, a Montreal 
psychic. “The Midwest drought will last
well into the next century,” she says.  
“The serpent will tighten his grip
breathing clouds of locusts on our farmers’ crops.”

“Until what year will this drought last?” 
King asks. “Which will be hardest hit,
Indiana corn or Kansas wheat?  You psychics 
are good at making vague prophesies 
but lousy with accurate predictions.”

I listen to the woman’s hesitation—
a rush of breath, a sigh released 
2,000 miles across the continent.
My hands clutch the steering wheel hard
as I wait for her tongue, like warm honey,
to rush through my limbs.

This is America: the voices race
by the clouds, reverberate in my brain.  
I remember Revelation: if the psychic, 
Queen of Locusts, separates the wheat 
from the chaff, Larry King will reign
over the next millennium.  

But at 6 A.M. when the national signal
shuts down and the radio waves
evaporate into the clouds
I’m left with nothing,
just the cold Utah
dawn, the red
cliffs.     

Previously published in Five Fingers Review